Things and work in Portuguese

Thirty-second on this list is o professor, glossed simply as the teacher, and the gloss is right in a way that catches an English reader off guard. In Portuguese the word covers everybody who stands in front of a class: o professor primário teaches children of six, o professor de música gives lessons in a room above a shop, and O professor é português says nothing whatever about a university. English narrowed the same Latin word to the top of one ladder. A « professor » in Britain holds a chair, is appointed to it, and is usually the only person in the department entitled to the title; everyone else is a « lecturer », a « teacher » or a « tutor ». For that narrow sense Portuguese has to say the whole thing, o professor catedrático, and even then the everyday word stays available underneath it. So the traffic runs one way, and it is worth knowing which way before the first conversation: every English professor is um professor, and hardly any professor is a « professor ».